Fox's Marvel Creative Consultant Mark Millar talks more about the highly anticipated First Class sequel, praising director Bryan Singer and calling it "ambitious". He also discusses what went wrong with X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

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By Paul Romano - 1/16/2013

Speaking with SciFi Now, Mark Millar, 20th Century Fox's creative consultant for the studio's upcoming Marvel adaptations, talks more about director Bryan Singer's highly anticipated return to the X-Men universe, Days Of Future Past. Millar praises Singer's prior work on the series with 2000's X-Men and 2003's X2: X-Men United, and says that the First Class sequel is "ambitious", which shouldn't be surprising considering the source matterial. "It’s incredibly exciting. Even just as a fan. The first X-Men really launched the wave of superhero movies we’ve been loving for the past decade after some horrific stuff in the Nineties so having him back in the world he started just feels right. X2, I think, is one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. The idea of this guy [Singer] being back in the fold and planning something as ambitious as this picture can only be good news."

Millar then expresses no worries in how the film is being handled, despite the heavy mythology. "I think as long as it’s done right. I know how it’s done, so I’m not worried. I’ve been in all these meetings and talked about it at length with everyone, and everything I hear sounds incredibly mainstream. It’s no more difficult than The Terminator, or whatever, there’s one element of time jump in it, but other than that it’s absolutely fine. It’s hard for me to say without actually spoiling the movie, but [producer Matthew] Vaughn – the guy who made the $28 million Kick-Ass look like a $78 million movie, you know? – I completely trust him when it comes to stuff like that – he knows exactly what he’s doing, and Simon Kinberg [X-Men: The Last Stand, Sherlock Holmes writer] has actually done a phenomenal job on the screenplay with him so it’s worked out really well."

One of the most common complaints concerning some of the X-Men films - specifically 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand and 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine - was their including far too many characters to properly tell the story. Millar agrees that that was the biggest problem with those two X-movies. "I remember when I was writing Ultimate X-Men and people were saying ‘I want to see Gambit, I want to see Rogue, I want to see…’ Everybody has a list and at first you think ‘I’m going to please everyone’ and then you realise you’re pleasing no-one by just throwing in ten second cameos, you know. I think that was the major problem with that first Wolverine movie and X-Men 3. Bryan Singer did such an incredible job with that original movie – it’s quite like Star Wars in that there’s Episodes IV, V and VI, and we’ve got the Matthew Vaughn prequels, and I love that – I love the fact that it simplifies so well. X-Men in the Nineties was so convoluted in comic-book terms, and Bryan drove a knife through it and make it work and simplified the whole thing.

"I’d like to have that same approach and if we are bringing in a character then it shouldn’t just be for a trailer or to get a picture up online, get people excited, it should actually have a point in the story. The trick with that is to try and keep the cast relatively small so that you actually care about them."

X-Men: Days Of Future Past stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Jennifer Lawrence, Hugh Jackman and Nicholas Hoult. The film is set to hit theaters July 18th, 2014. Additionally, The Wolverine is scheduled for a July 26th release, while Fantastic Four will arrive March 5th, 2015.

Thing is...I love the way Mark Millar talks about the films and everything I hear him say is greatly true...but he constantly talks crap before having all the facts. So...I'm not sure what to make of this.

Millar can be so annoying at times but does have the ability to be entertaining too. A very confusing guy.

Anyways the biggest news related to this movie I have absolutely [frick]ing surprised hasn't been pick up on is Jock(you know [frick]ing awesome artist, you might have heard of him) is working on the costume designs for X-Men: Days of Future Past, the dude confirmed it himself on his twitter account.

Thats probably the biggest news thats come out of this movie so far. Two things are guaranteed about this film Fassbender will be great and the costume desings by Jock will be pretty cool.

BTW just so you guys know how much 'talent' Millar is working with, one of the four writers for the Green Lantern movie is the writer who's been hired to write the Fantastic Four reboot. Just some food for thought, kids ;)

1) Days of Future Past is synonymous with Sentinels, just as God Loves, Man Kills is with Stryker, the Dark Phoenix Saga is with Jean. You will get them in some form, I am certain.

2) If you had Sentinels from the very beginning, things would get confused. Why are there giant hunter-killers abducting/killing mutants in modern America? What kind of government would approve that? Sentinels represent a holocaust. You need a set-up for that, and if you began with Days of Future Past, then the future franchise would find ways to call back and use elements of that plot, just as they have with Stryker. Can't start off with time travel. Star Trek did it by accident, not design, and it wasn't exactly new to the series in 2009, now, was it?

3) Millar has some great points here that we seem to be ignoring out of spite.

a) X-Men DID rejuvenate CBMs after the 90s. Blade was an R-rated super-violent bloody action/horror flick, and I'm going to be so bold as to say that Blade was and still is an obscure character in comics. What has Blade been doing lately? Who knew about Blade before Wesley Snipes? Maybe those who saw the Spider-man cartoon, but apart from that, he's just as obscure as Captain Britain... more so, actually.

b) Singer may not be on my list of favorites, but even I give credit where it is due. He essentially made a Star Trek movie (he's a big trekkie) with the same number of characters that would appear in an episode, and sold it to audiences consisting of fans, non-fans, and casual comic book browsers. An ensemble of characters who had been changed over and over again for a decade by two handfuls of writers, and not only introduced them, but made them (mostly) relevant.

c) Singer has spoiled us. Again, still not his number one fan, especially after Superman Returns, but let's face it - every fan felt they were entitled to have what they wanted, because he was competent enough to bring not just one, but at least a dozen Marvel characters to the big screen in one sitting. We all wanted more, and we got more. And more. Just remember that originally, there were only five (or six) X-Men suited up in the first movie.

WYLEEJAY@ If they reboot via time travel then it just means they have to diverge from the timestream before the Emma Frost in First Class is born. That way, any charcter can be born earlier than they usually would. Within reason.

x-men 2 is without doubt the closest we've had to an x-men movie,the others are just filled with moments nothing more nothing less,they f*cked up their own movie continuity to make them good let alone no respect to the source material.

the wolverine could be good,its pretty hard to f*ckin hard to f*ck up that story.

looking forward to x-men days of future past as well just for the originals returning & the sentinels,but again i'll be pissed if we don't get to see 25ft sentinels.

Its a shame Miller seemed to just realize that X3 and Origins had too many mutants crammed and at least for X3, too many story lines mixed. As much as I liked FC it had no actual First Class characters save Beast and Prof. X. That's probably one of the few things that ticks me off about that movie. I want to have faith in DOFP but I'm concerned that there's gonna be too many characters in this film. And unless its a two-parter I'm afraid jumping between time lines will distract from Young Erik/Charles and their development. Hoping Fox won't disappoint. But then again... it is Fox

PeteParker91@ A two-parter would be a really good idea, here, in my opinion. It's the only way they can service both eras, successfully. From the sounds of what Mr Millar is saying, the future scenes won't be in there that much. Just a few scenes, like Terminator? That's really not going to be satsfying enough for the majority of fans. Fox, Singer and Millar are all on shaky grounds with the fanbase as it is. They really should aim to please, with this. Besides, the comic storyline was a two parter, so it would be a nice little nod to that. The first part would have to be mostly in the future/s, with only a bit of the past, in there. The second one can focus more on the '60s era and be a flat-out First Class sequel. It would also be kind of cool for the second First Class film to have a number 2 theme (as it would be Days of Future Past part 2), as the first film had the number 1 theme (First Class).

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